Winging It

In this audiobook, Randy Fertel offers a tour de force exploration of improvisation and its many uses, beginning with what most people would associate with “improv”: a distinctive form of theater perfected by Chicago’s Second City troupe. The author demonstrates how improvisation touches many other areas of life and society that have both immense creative and destructive potential. He shows why the latter is especially salient in today’s political climate. Indeed, for Fertel, one of the most significant applications of improvisation is in the political arena, where it is the most perilous. While explaining the dark places that former President Donald Trump takes improvisation, Fertel suggests that “his improvising gave him the authority to break norms (and laws).”